


Off Into the Stars

by everystareverywhere



Series: Alternative Universe Prompts [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, museum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everystareverywhere/pseuds/everystareverywhere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose got a job working the night shifts at a museum. And she got the shock of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off Into the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of Night at the Museum and I have no idea where I was going with this.

A security guard. Not just any security guard, but a _night_ guard for a _museum._

Rose Tyler believed that nothing could be as boring as being the night guard for a museum.

Was she mistaken.

The first clue should have been when the (now ex) security guard handed her a raggedy old manual and said, “Make sure you lock the front door,” as though she wouldn’t have been able to figure out to lock the front door. She was young, but not stupid. She figured that any security job would encourage you to lock the front door.

The second clue should have been the manual itself. Rose really didn’t look that closely at it. It was badly torn and almost turning yellow, that’s how old it was. She did skim it though. She saw things like _“Make sure you always have your keys_ ” and _“Lock the animals’ exhibit first_.” It was pretty odd, considering that no one else was in the museum except her.

That’s when it should have dawned on her that something happened. But at the time she thought nothing of it. So she walked around the museum, admiring all of the pieces of art work and looked at the statues of the now infamous people. She fell asleep at the desk. She played with the intercom system. It wasn’t until she heard an enormous roar that she realized something was amiss.

Basically, everything in the museum comes alive at night.

And she almost ran out the (locked) door.

Animals that had been extinct for years were walking around the ground floor; people who had been dead for centuries walked past each other with a small wave; the statues were talking and moving. The art pieces on the wall started moving.

Rose was completely in over her head and she wanted out.

“Hey now,” a voice said, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. “What’s the tears for?”

Rose didn’t even realize she was crying until the young (at least, he _looked_ young) man took out a handkerchief and handed it to her. She wasn’t even crying because she was sad or upset. She was more frightened than anything else.

(And that damn monkey stole her keys and refused to give it back, no matter how nicely Rose asked)

“I—Everything—Alive—What?”

“Ah,” the young man said. “You must be the new security guard. Allow me to introduce myself. The Doctor, at your service.”

He was very handsome, this Doctor. With his brown pinstripe suit, and his hair sticking up, he looked like he could walk right out of the museum and no one would look twice at him. He looked to be in his early to mid-thirties, but Rose would bet her whole paycheck he was way older than that.

And she was correct. He was over nine hundred years old and had no idea why he was trapped in the museum. “All I know is if anyone steps outside while the sun is out, we turn into dust.”

“Can that happen to you too? I mean, because you said you’re not even sure why you’re here.”

“I never really wanted to test that theory. The outcome could only go one of two ways, and if it went the other way…Well, it’s just a theory that I don’t really want to test.”

The Doctor calmed her down, and even though she was firm about not coming in tomorrow night, the Doctor almost made the whole crazy thing worth it. So even though her letter of resignation was sitting there on the corner of the table, she never actually brought it to work. Because as the days past, and she knew what to expect, she actually came to love her job. She loved being able to talk to Queen Victoria (and she giggled every time she said, “I am not amused.”) She loved being able to play fetch with the skeleton of a T-Rex. She loved that she could talk to paintings and admire their work fully.

But most of all, she loved spending time with the Doctor.

He came to the museum by mistake and he was stuck there, turning into wax every morning until he could figure out a way to find his spaceship/time machine and leave.

“You have a spaceship?” Rose asked in awe, almost picturing the adventures they would have in her head.

“It’s also a time machine.”

Rose saw herself having tea with the real Charles Dickens and she almost squealed at the thought.

“What does it look like?”

“A police box from the 1960s. Do you think you could find it?”

Rose had no idea where to being looking. Not that she didn’t want to help, because she most certainly did. But it’s not exactly like you can just type _big blue police box_ into a Google search engine and get a real result.

Not that she didn’t try.

But while she looked for his box, she did enjoy wandering around the museum with him, talking about everything he had ever seen. He always asked her what she did during the day, but it sounded so boring compared to his stories, that she never spoke for long. She would always ask him a question, and though she could see that he wanted to talk about her, talking about his adventures always made his eyes light up in a way that was intoxicating for Rose.

“This one planet, Rose, oh, you’d love it. It’s Barcalona. Not the city, the planet. Oh you would just _love_ it! They have dogs with no noses! Can you imagine telling that joke every day, but it never gets old.”

“So I would come with you?”

It was the first time he ever hinted at her coming along, and the thought made her heart pound and her head spin.

He looked at her confused. “Of course you would. I mean, as long as you would like to. Would you like to come along?”

The smile burst from her face before she could do otherwise. “Yes!”

But this made finding the blue box all the more important.

When she wasn’t working or sleeping, she was trying to locate this box. She thought she found it, actually, but when she went to investigate it, she realized it was really a police box from the 1960s and not a spaceship.

“How will I know it’s your box?” Rose asked one night, months after she started.

“You’ll know. Here, take this.” He pulled a long string out of his jacket pocket and put it in her stretched out hand. “If no other key will work, _this_ key will open the door.”

Rose held the key tightly in her hand, and she knew, deep down, that this moment was going to completely change her life. Because she was never going to give this key back.

“And I’ll just know?”

“You’ll just know.”

It had been a year since she started working at the museum, and she was no closer to finding that box than she was on the day she started. She had pictures and maps up in her room, sightings of this blue box throughout history. But nothing pointed to the now. The last time the box had touched Earth was sometime in 2005. Which is when the Doctor said he arrived at the museum.

“So what happened to you?”

“I really have no idea. I must have been mixed up in something I shouldn’t have been—surprise, surprise for me. And I think I was cursed. Or ban. I’m not really sure. I just know that when you find the TARDIS, that’s when this mess will be over with, and we go can off into the stars.”

He always ended their conversations for the night with that phrase. “We’ll go off into the stars.” It always sounded like a fairytale waiting to happen. And Rose couldn’t stop herself from dreaming about those stars and her hand in his as they investigated those stars up close.

Rose walked with the Doctor to his podium. He was next to a huge green hand that had three long fingers and a helmet of some kind that looked more like a face. Thank goodness neither of those things came to life, but the Doctor still looked worried every time he passed them.

Every night for the past year, the Doctor would squeeze her hand, giving her the very definition of a sad smile, as he got up onto the small podium and fixed his body to look like a statue. Just as he finished saying, “Tomorrow, Rose, tomorrow we’ll go off into the stars,” the sun peeked through the windows, and once more he was froze.

He looked so Doctor-esque, that Rose almost didn’t want to leave him. His one hand was stretched out in front of him, as though just about to reach out to grab something out of reach. Rose stood lightly onto the podium. She knew that she would have a few minutes to herself before the day guard would come in. And so, she reached up to touch his hand. She knew that he wouldn’t squeeze back, like he usually does when they held hands. But for one moment, she swore that he did. Just a small squeeze, as though he could really feel her there.

Looking into his brown eyes, she swore that she was going to find that blue box if it was the last thing she ever did.

Until then, she loved her time with the Doctor more than anything, and even if she never found that blue box, she felt like she saw the stars with him every night.  


End file.
